If You Are Exceptional, You Must Be Acceptable...to God

With the election looming large, I have been thinking about American Exceptionalism.

I had to look that phrase up, because it seems to invoke a lot of arguing and finger pointing. Here is a good operating definition from the Britannica: 

"American exceptionalism, idea that the United States of American is a unique and even morally superior country for historical, ideological, or religious reasons. Proponents of American exceptionalism generally pair the belief with the claim that the United States is obligated to play a special role in global politics." [1]

This definition played out when we landed on the moon in 1969.  As a kid, it seemed that there was nothing we couldn't do as a nation.   

My history books seem to imply that when we made our way out West, it was one vast empty plain.  I  remember one Indian attack, on a poor hapless woman evangelist.  Imagine my surprise when I learned about the complexities existing between native peoples and westward expansion.  Dances With Wolves was a revelation. 

Slavery?  We focused on the Emancipation Proclamation. That was about it. 

Back then, it was easy to believe America got it right every time, or at least, rarely got it wrong. 

I am not here to bash America.  It has become very trendy to point out all of our faults, seriously flawed beliefs and failures. That is why Trump seems so out of place in the public arena for a lot of people.  His beliefs about America echo what I heard growing up and what I read about in my history books.

Was what I learned all wrong?  No, I don't believe so.  I think a lot of it was not discussed, because it didn't fit the idea of American Exceptionalism, so it was left out.   I perceived that Viet Nam seem to be a mistake, only because my dad was angry about it. We consoled ourselves with the thought that at least we got out with what Nixon called "Peace with honor."  The war and its destructive effects on our  soldiers and America's confidence in itself took decades to heal, but we carried on with our definition of our greatness. 

I remember a college professor who taught exactly the opposite of what I had been taught.  When I asked him about this, he said, "I am teaching the other side."  I hadn't really thought there was another side. 

Yes, there was.  

The Jewish people, the chosen people, had that same sense of destiny and being special. They were to be a blessing to all nations, as God told Abraham, who had been willing to offer up his son: 

"I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.” (Gen. 22:17-18) 

Why did God chose the Jewish people? He tells them:

"The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments." (Deut. 7:7-9)

For what purpose were they chosen?   God tells Moses: "Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.” (Ex. 19:5-6) 

Priests point to God, teach about God and live in such a manner that people may know about Him by watching how His people live. 

Peter takes this idea and applies it to include those who follow Jesus, whether Jew or Gentile: "But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light." (1 Peter 2:9) 

Imagine then, the day Jesus and His disciples were in Jerusalem for the Passover.  They stood in utter awe of the Temple.  It was a mind-boggling and breathtaking architectural achievement.  But more than that:  God resided there.   

God's house.  Chosen people.  Exceptional among the nations. 

But He blew them away:

"Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. 'Do you see all these things?' he asked. 'Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.'” (Matt. 24:1-2)

I am sure the disciples were dumbfounded.  They wanted to soften this statement by Jesus, and put it in its larger (read: future) context--someday, far away from now (the disciples were hoping) and they asked Him to explain.  The picture He painted was scary, but seemed far off... They must have breathed a sigh of relief.  Maybe, they thought,  Jesus was just being metaphorical.  He loved to teach in parables, after all.  

But it was only about 40 years in the future. 

What is known as the Great Revolt, where some Jewish radicals, disgusted with the Romans, rose up in Galilee in 66 AD.  For several years, many uprisings occurred, and the Roman army, in characteristic fashion, crushed these revolts.  By 70 AD, the Romans went in without mercy into Jerusalem after a siege, and threw down the walls of the mighty Temple just as Jesus predicted.  The army looted the Holy Place and Holy of Holies. They killed or enslaved the Jewish people.  There were a few more revolts, and by the 130's, the Jews were exiled altogether from Israel, and would not return until 1948.

It was catastrophic. 

This echoes the destruction of Israel (the northern kingdom) by the Assyrians in 732 BCE and the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 BCE, resulting in their captivity in Babylon for 70 years. 

There, God allowed pagan nations to punish His people for their disobedience of His laws and decrees.  They disregarded their exceptionalism and took on the practices of their pagan neighbors: worshipping idols and engaging in their practices of sexual immortality and child sacrifice. They were no longer acting as priests to the nations.   

Or, as in the Great Revolt, they grew weary of their oppression and took matters into their own hands, ignoring God and assuming He'd just get on board once they started.  They believed in God, but believed even more in their just cause. 

Pagan practices. Disloyalty to God. Failure to act and behave in a manner that behooved the chosen of God. It's as if God said, You so admire pagan practices, pagan ways and pagan kings.  You will come out from under My eagles' wings, and live, die and be scattered by those people you so admire and emulate. 

Their exceptionalism demanded they be acceptable to God. 

And they weren't.

Are we a kind of Israel?  The American exceptionalism definition seems to have an implied affinity with Israel--that we have been chosen by God. 

But is our exceptionalism being lived out, or are we imitating the ways and behaviors of nations that have turned away from God?  Are we taking matters into our own hands, trying to be progressive, savvy and not burdened with conventional morality? 

There were certainly Jews who did not go along with what their kings were doing and how their neighbors were acting. They listened to the prophets who warned the nation and tried to make changes.

But overall? 

God used His word, His prophets and an occasional king to try to turn the people back to Himself.  But the people ignored Him.  Judgment came. This sad biblical history of blessing, descending into disobedience, ignoring warning and then receiving judgment is there for one reason:  To teach humanity that God takes very seriously that nations uphold His morality. 

Micah put it so well: 

"He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. 

And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God." (6:8) 

The bar was set higher for His chosen.

We have set the bar higher for our nation, seeing it as exceptional. 

Consequently, are we acting in ways that are acceptable to God? 

[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/American-exceptionalism

The Everyday is So...Well, Every Day

"The problem with everyday," my mom used to say, "It's, well, so every day."

That right there is life in the desert: It's day by day, every day, with a level of hopelessness that your life will be like this.  Forever.

Sometimes it's hour by hour. 

It's hard, to be sure, but that doesn't permit us to slip into grumbling--which is kind of hidden rebellion against God.  

Think of it this way:  Have you ever known someone who will not tell you out right what is wrong, but will say something under their breath, just loud enough for you to hear it?  They won't come right out and tell you--they want you to know just enough, and because they are hurt or angry, they want you to fill in the missing pieces and then understand their hurt or anger.  Or they get someone else to tell you, for the person is still not willing to confront you directly; they think if someone else tells you, you will go to that person and inquire as to what is wrong.

The person, all the while, is still hurt or angry as they send their "envoys" out. That anger or hurt then begins to transform into bitterness, because the person is not getting the results they think they deserve. Hebrews 12:15 really captures this descent into bitterness and its consequences: "See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many."

Wow.  By not seeing God's grace, bitterness ensues.  Why?  Because you think that God doesn't (a) care (b) blesses everyone but you (c) appreciate all you've done (d) all of the above.

Look how Paul frames the argument: 

"Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: 'The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.' We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did—and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died. We should not test Christ, as some of them did—and were killed by snakes. And do not grumble, as some of them did—and were killed by the destroying angel. These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come. So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!" (1 Cor. 10:6-12)

What a minute, here.  I am not an idolater, so that passage is rather irrelevant to me. I don't test Christ.  Yeah, I grumble--sometimes--but I am still here, so I obviously didn't attract the attention of the destroying angel."

OK, that's fair.  But when testing (the same word for "temptation") comes, how do you respond?  Grumbling?  Despairing?  Christian on the outside, rebellious soul on this inside? No comes the most quoted part of this passage: "No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it." (1 Cor. 10:13)

Testing tempts you to dive deep into yourself, and seek out your own resources.

That's idolatry.  When you trust and then are loyal to something or someone other than God, your idol has taken you away from sitting at God's feet and waiting on Him to show you the way. 

Some of us want Christ to show Himself, in a mighty way, because we have lots and lots of faith, and His delay means we need to muster more. We determine the how and why of His showing up with our presumptuous declarations of faith. That's testing Christ.  It's the "if you really loved me, You'd do this!"  We demand a response rather than a relationship.

And we grumble.  To others.  Under our breath.  Disguised as conversation.   Disguised as concern.  Just wanting to vent and really not get to the root of our situation: We are growing rebellious and bitter, despite all appearances to the contrary. 

Back to the desert.  The daily grind gets to us at times, and we start to complain about God's delay and the monotony of the situation. The root of bitterness is slowly but surely twisting around our heart. 

What's amazing is how God will show up despite our grumbling, because He loves us: 

"Then Moses told Aaron, 'Say to the entire Israelite community, Come before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.’

"While Aaron was speaking to the whole Israelite community, they looked toward the desert, and there was the glory of the Lord appearing in the cloud.

"The Lord said to Moses, 'I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them,  At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.'

That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, 'What is it?' For they did not know what it was." (Ex. 16: 9-15) [my emphasis] 

Way more important is not the manna, but that God showed up!  The manna was amazing, yes, but even more so, the Lord showed up (again, by the way--the Exodus is a testimony to God' numerous appearances!) and then came the bread.

Jesus showed up to answer the cry of our rebellious/aching/lost heart and then He offered Himself as the Bread of Life.

Maybe it's not the every day of the desert and our struggles in it; it's focusing on the desert and not seeing the One who shows up with love and His healing presence.

If we are not careful, our bitterness will blind us to God's appearances in our desert. Not because we've demanded it, or expect it, but because He loves us and has our best interests at heart. 

Trusting Him:  Isn't that what will truly get us through the every day of the desert?  Yes, manna is fine, but isn't our true hunger going to only be met by Him? 

Boxes

Sometimes, in our effort to be spiritual, we store our lives in neat, tidy and separate boxes. We go to church, pray, go to a Bible study, tithe, pray some more, and hang out with a Christian sister or brother for some not-just-on-a-Sunday fellowship. 

All well and good.

But the rest of our lives is in other boxes. We have our financial box; it's our money, after all, and we spend it as we choose, right?  We pay our bills and then whatever is left over is ours. We only consider the spiritual aspect of our money on Sundays mornings (or maybe not even then--or we pop a fiver into the plate and call it good). 

We have our media box. We watch, listen and read whatever sparks our interest or what we want to keep up on.  We really don't think about spiritual implications of what we are putting into our hearts and minds.  Sometimes we watch or read religious teachers, almost as a substitute to spending time in the Word.

We have our family box.  We spend time together, and that is very important.  We take our children to church and then whip out our cell phones during the sermon--the implicit message we are sending is that if the sermon isn't interesting then we can use other means to keep our attention.  We try to eat dinner together, or maybe, we all sit around on our phones, with a few exchanges here and there.  Maybe we do a fine job with our family, watching movies and going places.  But other than going to church, do we spend time talking about God?

Then we have our work box. We work and come home exhausted, upset or just plain wanting the day to be over.  We plop on the couch and check out.  We play video games, spend time on our phone or just want to be left alone.  We may even love our job, but it takes a lot out of us, either because we are doing the work of two people, or because our society is so rude and demanding, that we are drained by our interactions with others.  The last thing we want to do when we come home is be social.

Our lives look like a storage unit filled with lots of boxes; some are labelled and some are not. Then we close the unit's door. We forget what each box contains. 

Finally, there is our social box:  How do we process the news swirling around us, and what do we believe? We can be real nice to people until someone mentions something political and/or societal, and BOOM! we are free to be as nasty, aggressive, gossipy or antagonistic as we want to be, because it's OK to let fly these days on certain subjects.  We tone it down at church and smile when someone says something we disagree with, but on the way home, watch out.  Our words are nothing but judgments on the person we talked to--how could they be that stupid/naive/wrong?  We don't think that way...why should they?

OK, let's tie this in to the desert experience of the Israelites in Exodus.  We see them, in chapter 15, complaining that (a) there is no water and (b) the water they find is bitter.  

God directs Moses to toss a piece of wood into the water, and it becomes potable. God then warns the people that provision from Him is based on obedience to Him: "There the Lord issued a ruling and instruction for them and put them to the test.  He said, 'If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you.'” (Ex. 15:25-26)

God is saying, in effect, Don't put Me into a box of your own choosing. I am the God of everything: food, drink, heat, wanderings, joy, and provision. Don't act like pagans.  You are My Chosen People, and I want you to act like it.  Otherwise, you lose My protection, and you will be down range of all sorts of afflictions and trouble. 

Jesus warned the people of avoiding the same pitfall: "And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him." (Matt. 6:7-8)

The Israelites, after receiving water from the rock and camping at Elim, where water and shade were in abundance, (Ex. 15:27) they went right back into putting God into boxes:  

Box 1:  He did lots of wonder-working signs to vanquish Pharoah, his gods and his society, but that was then, this is now. 

Box 2:  He provided water, true, with the wood thing, but God can only work in small increments of mightiness and His power doesn't reach into right now, right here, where we are. 

Box 3:  Hey, the food we brought with us is dwindling, and we feel panicky. God provided before, yes, but that was then and this is NOW! 

They begin to grumble: 

"The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, 'If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.'” (Ex. 16:1-3) 

Really?  But if we don't unbox our life with God, and let all of what God has done/does stay right in front of us, we see only limitations, one-off's and things happening back then, but not now: 

Sure He did it back then, but He won't do it this time. 

God, because of His holy character, is the same yesterday, today and forever.  As He did with the water, He will do with the food: 

"Then the Lord said to Moses, 'I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.'” (16:4-5) 

It's not that God is giving them random instructions:  He wants the people to unbox and look at all He has done, and will continue to do.  He also wants the people to understand that His provision is commensurate with their obedience:    

"So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, 'In the evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, and in the morning you will see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we, that you should grumble against us?' Moses also said, 'You will know that it was the Lord when he gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the Lord.'” (16:6-8) 

Boom!  There it is:  Their grumbling is against God. 

Our grumbling is against God.

They put His provision into a box, stored it away, and now in their forgetfulness, they accuse Him of inconsistency and the failure to provide. 

Whoa. 

We may never admit it, but we do the same thing.

Solution? It's time to clear out the storage unit.   

    

Grumble, Grumble, Toil and Trouble

We are following the Israelites, and if you ever wonder why something is in the Bible, it's because human nature does not fundamentally change, and God wants history to teach us that fact. The second thing we need to realize is how the Bible is pointing to Jesus.  So, not only do we learn about how broken we human beings really are, but how much we need a Savior.

How often do people say, "Well, why didn't the Jewish people get Jesus?"

"Why doesn't that person just do ahead and accept Christ?"

"Can't she see how sinful her life is?"

It's a Pharisee moment. How so?  We are recasting the person's predicament, attitude or desires into our own frame of reference.  When the Pharisees interrogated Jesus, they had already decided that He was not who He claimed to be and they wanted Him to discredit Himself with His answers to their questions. Their attitude was, at its core, 

Well, We would never talk to such despicable sinners! Why does He even bother?  He should be in the synagogue, studying the Torah with us, not fraternizing with people God clearly disapproves of. We stand with God.  He should be, too.  

We do the same thing.  In other words,

"I would have accepted Jesus in His day."  (Are you sure?  He made claims about His equality with His Father that you may have found blasphemous or at a minimum, very unsettling.)

"I accepted Christ.  Why can't he?" (Are you him?  Do you know his inner story? His life?)

"I saw my sin."  (You saw your sin?  Wasn't it the Holy Spirit who pointed it out to you, and perhaps it was many, many times before you truly saw your condition for what it was? How long did He work with you, revealing the saving grace of Jesus and the depth of your sin before you responded?)

When we minimize the other person's life and superimpose our responses over theirs, we start down the road to grumbling.

Yes, grumbling.

Let's get a definition from an online dictionary of the word: "the action or fact of complaining in a bad-tempered way." 

"Bad-tempered" is not what God wants to see or hear in His people. 

Let's define it from a Hebrew perspective: "The word in the Hebrew that is used here is layan which basically means to remain or stay. It is a refusal to move forward out of lack of faith and receiving divine instruction. I would give this a rendering of worry or fretting. Worry is nothing more than a lack of faith and refusal to receive divine instruction." [1]

Let's meet up with our wandering Israelites: 

"The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, 'If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.'” (Ex. 16:1-3).

OK. The people are now thinking about how things used to be, and grumbling about it. Why? Wait for it: the lack of food.  These are the same people who saw God do awe-inspiring miracles.  Not once, not twice, but over and over again. 

OK, you Israelites:  Let's review. Life in Egypt was acceptable, because you had food?  Let me highlight the choice words.  How about:

• "Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. 'Look,' he said to his people, 'the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.' So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly." (Ex. 1:8-14) 

Doesn't sound like Disneyland, does it?  Let's keep going.  How about this:

• "The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 'When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.'” (Ex. 1:15-16)

Great. But because of the fecundity of the Hebrews, harassing the midwives wasn't enough.  Pharoah brought his own people into it: 

• "Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: 'Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.'” (Ex. 1: 22)

Awesome. You now had a society focused on ferreting out little Hebrew babies and murdering them.

Moses grows up, having divinely evaded this decree and we meet him outraged by his people's brutal treatment: 

• "One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, 'Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?'  The man said, 'Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?' Then Moses was afraid and thought, 'What I did must have become known.'” (2:11-14)

Were the men afraid of retaliation from their overlords and so turned on Moses?  He didn't look like a slave, nor acted like one. Did they think, 

Why would some Egyptian-looking guy come to the aid of us slaves?  Is he a spy, keeping track of what we're doing, ready to report back to whoever sent him? We'll be punished, that's for sure!

God saw the violence, the hurt, the anger and the exhaustion of His people:

• "During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them." (Ex. 2:23-25) 

Not only did God see His people's suffering, He appointed a savior who He would use to liberate them. He chose Moses and spoke to him from a bush on fire, burning but not being consumed.  Just like the Israelites:  They were in the fire of slavery, but they were not going to be consumed: 

• "The Lord said, 'I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.'” (Ex. 3:7-10) 

Rescue. Deep understanding of misery. A new place to go where life will be better. Seeing the oppression. Sending a savior.

This is God's agenda from the word go.  He heard, He acted and He delivered His people with a beautiful display of miracles through His chosen leader. 

Does this pattern, by the way, ring any bells?  

God hears our cry.  He understands deeply our misery.  He desires to take us to a place that is new and free from slavery to sin.  He sees how oppressed we are by our sin, and He sent a Savior.

But once in the desert, the people actually thought their former life was better. 

Really?

This is the power of sin in our lives, that we once we face conflict, deprivation, or anything else that pushes hard on our faith, we begin to think back... Maybe my life back then wasn't so bad.  Well, at least I had ______________.  

Now, if we are not careful, we will start to grumble.  Grumbling stops the process of us trusting God, because it makes us sit down in the road of self-pity and acrimony towards God.  In other words, we take a bit handful of narcissism and shove it into our mouth.

Then, with its bitter taste on our tongue and our soul feeling empty, we fail to remember all of God's mercy, love, miracles and presence in our lives.  

Anguish, pain, sorrow and a feeling of abandonment, as painful as these emotions are to express, we are still conversing with God.

Grumbling means we have stopped talking to Him, yet demand He still talk to us. 

In His love and mercy, He keeps moving in our lives but grumbling can become a way of life, if we are not careful.  

It happened to Israelites.

It can happen to us. 

 

[1] https://www.chaimbentorah.com/2024/04/hebrew-word-study-grumble-lavan/

Pre-Desert Story: The Israelites

Every desert has a pre-story.  

It's a "remember when" kind of thinking.  It may not have been that perfect when you were actually living it, but compared to the desert you are now in, this reminiscing gives the past a glow, a beauty that makes us want to go back.

But the desert doesn't allow that. You are here. That's it.

That's one of the reasons that sometimes people don't want to hear our current desert story.  They, like Job's friends, think:  

Wow.  My life is going quite well right now.  What did you do to lose it, and go into this desert place you keep talking about?  You must have done something.  Or the person you are with must have done something. Well, maybe not.  No one asks for cancer.  But if your life was going so well, and then this happened, will I be next?  Does the desert await everybody?

Good question--one filled with fear and wanting some kind of guarantee that the desert is for some people, but hopefully not me.  I had someone tell me years ago that they didn't want to become a Christian, because bad things happen to Christians.  I asked how did she come to this conclusion? She  said that every Christian seminar or event has someone telling about how something terrible happened to them and they wanted everyone to know about it.

Hmmm.  There is some truth to that. We sometimes become spectators to the Body of Christ and the struggles people go through.  We watch, we listen, we are glad God gave them victory, but we wonder what price glory?  Will my child die?  Will my husband cheat on me?  Will I get some kind of uncurable cancer?  Will I lose my limbs in a car accident?

The world is an unpredictable place and we wonder if we are next.  

So, why not enjoy a stroll down memory lane?  It's understandable, but if we keep focusing on the past, and resent we are no longer living that life, we can fall prey to what the Israelites did:  complaining (a lot), not being thankful for God's provision and missing  out on His presence. 

Isaiah, speaking of the Servant of the Lord, says, "A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out." (42:3)

If we are servants of the Lord, then we are not going to be broken or completely consumed by what challenges us.  Even His Servant, after a horrific death, rose back to life.  Jesus's sufferings did not last forever while He walked on earth.  He had moments of joy, peace in between the moments of sadness, tears and suffering.

Let's walk out into the desert with Israelites.  They have recently seen the amazing power of the Lord: Pharoah and all that he represents had "paid" put to his account.  The judgements were harsh at times, but his system had to come under God's dominion to show the Israelites that what Pharaoh represented is not true and is not welcomed in Yahweh's world. 

What did Pharaoh represent?

He was a god and his actions guaranteed that life would proceed as it always had.  He controlled the Nile, the crops, the sun rising and setting, and all that good came from his hand.  Even life and death. 

He wasn't going to share the stage with God in any way.  But nor was God: 

“You shall have no other gods before me.

“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments." (Ex. 20:3-4)

In the Israelites' very recent past, they had watched God remove each aspect of their life in Egypt:  The gods were judged (each plague had a god behind it); their status as slaves was ended (they left Egypt as a free people, taking some of Egypt's wealth with them) and all that they had known was removed as they walked into the desert.

I am sure they were grateful.  At first.  Moses and the people sang a song of victory over Pharaoh and praised God for His mighty hand: 

"I will sing to the Lord, for an overflowing victory!
Horse and rider he threw into the sea!
The Lord is my strength and my power;
he has become my salvation.
This is my God, whom I will praise,
the God of my ancestors, whom I will acclaim.
The Lord is a warrior;
the Lord is his name." (Ex. 15:1-3)

Take that, Pharoah! Take that slavery! Take that Egypt!

Good times.  Blessed times. Times when it was obvious God was with them.

Then we learn, right after this:

"Then Moses had Israel leave the Reed Sea and go out into the Shur desert. They traveled for three days in the desert and found no water. When they came to Marah, they couldn’t drink Marah’s water because it was bitter. That’s why it was called Marah. The people complained against Moses, 'What will we drink?' Moses cried out to the Lord, and the Lord pointed out a tree to him. He threw it into the water, and the water became sweet." (Ex. 15:21-25)

Welcome to the desert.  Three days is about the maximum that a human being can go without water, so they were at the brink of dying of thirst.  

That's the desert for you:  It takes us to the very brink of our faith, ourselves, and our thinking about how the world should work. We feel we are tottering at the edge. One more hour, one more day, more event, and we are going over into the abyss.

We then question those around us, for we feel as if we are the only ones going through this. When, in all reality, we are questioning God.

Moses is God's spokesperson, so the people's questions to him are really aimed at God: 

You brought us out here and we are dying of thirst.  We finally find water, and are you kidding me?  It's BITTER?  Is this some kind of joke (not trying to be disrespectful here, but whoa!)  Moses, we can't DRINK THIS.

Now, let's consider what the people are really thinking:

So, God.  Gotta have a talk here.  We are at wit's end.  The desert here is unrelenting.  The sun, the rocks, the mountains...dryer than bones.  We have been following this man You chose (no disrespect here, but we didn't choose him) and now we gather around this water (which we desperately need) and IT'S BITTER, GOD!  Yes, we know You may know that, but then why did You lead us here in the first place?

I know, I know.  We might not ever say things like this out loud, but the desert leads us very quickly into despair, because it seems, well, hopeless. 

But here's the irony of the past. We want to go back to the days when the water wasn't bitter, the sun wasn't that hot, and we could choose who we listened to and take advice from.  We had enough food, water and a place to live (literally or metaphorically) and we could count on life being pretty much the same from day to day.  No real surprises.  No jarring moments.  Just a kind of coasting.  Oh, and most importantly:

We really felt You were with us. You demonstrated Your power in so many ways:  You showed the Prince of this World who was Boss and didn't let him further torment us; You made a spectacular way over the things that impeded us--by answering our prayers; by giving us miracles, God-moments and God-appointments.  We saw lives changed and progress in our walk with You. Every day was another demonstration of Your mightiness, Your provision and active engagement in our lives. 

Yes.  So, here's the question that the desert asks us: When did God stop being God? Remember: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." (Heb. 12:8)  

"God is not human, that he should lie,
not a human being,
that he should change his mind.
Does he speak and then not act?
Does he promise and not fulfill?" (Number 23: 19)

Maybe our past seems so golden because we were way more aware of God working in our lives, or maybe the challenges were not so great that we could meet them ourselves.

Now, it seems God isn't as involved as He was, or the challenges are so great we can't meet them ourselves. 

Let's take a peek at how God answered the cries of His people: "Then Moses cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became fit to drink." (Ex. 15:25).

What wood had God thrown into your bitter water?

The cross. 

Next: 

"There the Lord issued a ruling and instruction for them and put them to the test. He said, 'If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you.'” (Ex. 15:26)

God wants us to remember where rebellion can take us:

"See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called 'Today,' so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. As has just been said:

'Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion.'

    

"Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief." (Heb. 3:12-19)

Anguish is not rebellion.  Deep sadness is not rebellion.  But losing sight of God's faithfulness in the past and thinking He is not going to provide for us now, and then consequently growing cold in our love and trust in Him...that is the danger zone for us.  The danger zone of rebellion. 

God does not cease to work or make Himself known to us because we are in the desert.  He wants us to know even more deeply because of the desert just how much He is still with us.  Look how He refreshed His people after the bitter water experience: 

"Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy palm trees, and they camped there near the water." (Ex. 15:27) 

They were still in the desert.

But so was God.

And so is God. 

Pre-Desert Life: My Story

Life before the desert looks sometimes way better than when you were actually living it.

The desert seems even bleaker because you did have something way back when.  It was a place where things made sense, you saw life go from day to day in a rather predictable pattern, and you had a good idea of what the next day would bring.

The desert?  All bets are off when you enter.  All the certainties, all the predictability and all the sense of life goes away.  Really away, not just a temporary cessation.

Eleven years ago, a year before we entered the desert, my husband had an aortic valve replacement.  He recovered really well, and felt healthier than he had in a long time.  

Our lives resumed. 

A year later, the desert called. 

My husband suffered a heart attack, and while on the table, he had a massive stroke.  H was in rehab for eight weeks, and just before the hospital discharged him, the nurse told me I would either have to quit my job or have a homecare nurse come in full time. 

I was teaching at the community college.  I taught writing, Shakespeare, and British literature.  It was challenging, but I loved it.  For my writing classes, grading 4 sets of papers per student, with 3 or more classes with 28 students each got to be wearisome, but I made it work. 

I had no idea that my Shakespeare class that spring would be the last class I would teach at the college. I walked out that last day of class without a clue of the changes that awaited me.  

My husband had his heart attack later that summer.

Our lives changed in a New York minute.

Everything I depended on, including a husband who was able to do so much, was gone.  He had been an instructor at the same college, wrote books on Constitutional law, worked as a software engineer, and loved doing astrophotography.

All gone.  

We applied for medical disability and had no trouble receiving it. Praise God, we were financially able to carry on, thanks to my husband's savvy with investments over the course of his career.   

Life became medical appointments, recovery and trying to get back to normal.

I just assumed he'd recover as well as he did from the first surgery, and we would go back to normal again. 

Wrong. 

The desert isn't like that.  You just don't leave the desert and just go back to Egypt.  Another life awaits you and have no idea what it will be like. You are truly in a new normal, and it will shift from day to day, as you try to figure out what's happening. Once you think you've arrived at normal, life shifts again.

We finally left the home we'd been in for fourteen years, up in the mountains.  Our children were very concerned about how far away we were from all medical care.  Living in the mountains takes good health and stamina, especially with all the driving we did and winters where the snow could be as much as four feet deep.

The house we moved into was a blessing, for it had a lovely view of the mountains, but it wasn't the same.  We missed that house, but it more than that.  We missed our old lives. 

After seven years of being unemployed, my daughter encouraged me to apply as an educational aide at our grandchildren's school.  I applied and then I was asked to be a full time teacher.

By then my husband had resumed teaching (online), writing and being engaged with legal actions that violated the 2nd Amendment.  He kindly cooked dinner, and had a nice cup of tea awaiting me when I got home.  

But caretaking students, parents and a principal was exhausting, and along with grading endless amounts of work, coupled with the caretaking of my husband, proved too much.  I left my job after a year and a half.

When a person has a stroke, it is a challenge to recover from, and a person battles with fatigue, cognitive changes and trying to make sense of it all.  It's its own desert.

Our lives have, since all of this, have not been static.

Just recently, my husband underwent a double bypass and an aortic valve replacement.  He is in recovery now, and he's doing well physically. 

We are knee deep in medical appointments.  I am truly grateful for his recovery and how God has been in this every step of the way, guiding us, bringing us sweet people to help us and a church that has stood by us.  Our family has been wonderful. 

But the desert is exhausting.  It challenges all your assumptions of how life works, and I have on more than one occasion questioned God.

I have been in the dark night of the soul on more than one occasion.

You see, when you are the desert, you lean into God like never before.  I love God, but I have watched a slow fading of my husband, and it cuts me deeply.  We have been married for forty-four years.  The desert has not been kind, although God has.

But the desert tests you about how you see God, what He means to you and what you believe about grace, forgiveness, His sovereignty and His reliability.  

The desert can been merciless, for your soul erupts with endless questions, with no easy answers.  

People have been kind to us, that is for sure, but the greatest loneliness you can feel is with another person.

Was life, pre-desert, easy?  No, and it would be way too easy to romanticize it and make into something it wasn't.  

The desert is a place where you meet God in a way you never thought possible.  

I am still there and I am still meeting Him in ways I never thought possible. 

Next time, we will examine how despite God taking the Israelites out of Egypt, it was way harder to take Egypt out of the Israelites.  

 

Life in the Desert: Not Wanting This Journey, But Here It Is

People say all the time, "Life is a journey," or "I am on a journey," and this sounds good.  The image that comes to mind is you are on a road of your own choosing, and despite a rock or two in your path, you walk on, aware that you have not reached your destination.

But what if the journey you are on is not of your own choosing?  The road that you now walk is not familiar and each day is more like a strenuous hike then a gentle amble. 

Then it hits you:  How did I get on this road in the first place?  Maybe I chose to walk it initially, but then it became something I had not planned on, and now each mile is a drudge. 

I am personally in the desert.  I went from teaching literature and writing at a community college to a full time caretaker after my husband suffered a stroke and a heart attack ten years ago. My life changed in a New Your minute. So did his. 

His road became my road. After seven years, I went back to work, but the stress of teaching high school and continuing to caretake wore me down.  Modern teachers do a lot of caretaking of students--their needs, their mental health, their unhappy home life and their parents, who are either absent from their child's education (until they get a bad grade and it must be the teacher's fault, right?) or they come in like a Mongolian hoard or your administrators do, wanting to placate a parent who has spent all morning in their office. 

So, I am at home full time.  Just recently, my husband had open-heart surgery.  It was a long procedure, and everything went well. But his road is my road, and it will be a long one as he recovers.  

I want to explore desert life in light of the Israelites' sojourn. It struck me that they never asked to be slaves in Egypt.  In Genesis 42, we learn that a famine in Canaan, where Jacob and his sons lived, drove  Jacob to send his sons down to Egypt to buy food. 

Legitimate reason, right?  Why not?  

We are starving, there is food available for sale to us down south, so let's go!

Joseph is in charge and his brothers don't recognize him and he tests them by demanding that they bring their brother back, to prove they are not spies. Sometimes the road has obstacles and these sons of Jacob (and brothers to Joseph) hit theirs, but the famine drove them to do what Joseph requested. They arrive at Joseph's court and having proven themselves not to be spies, Joseph invited them to eat, but "They served him by himself, the brothers by themselves, and the Egyptians who ate with him by themselves, because Egyptians could not eat with Hebrews, for that is detestable to Egyptians." (Gen. 43:32). 

Whoops! Another obstacle.

Oh great. I can smell the food, the table's set and now these Egyptians have some stupid custom that we cannot eat with them. Oh, wait a minute. OK, we get to eat. So what if it's in another room. We will get to eat!

But this obstacle can be overcome. It's a short detour, but not a lengthy, soul-sucking one. That comes later when a Pharaoh rises to power and didn't know Joseph (or was either probably unaware or didn't care about all he had done for Egypt) and saw the children of Jacob as a threat, because of their very numbers.  He embarked on a murderous program of their baby boys.  He enslaved the people. 

Not a road of their choosing.  Nor, did they count on the length of stay: 400 years in Egypt.  What started out as a journey to survive a famine became enslavement.  The people, starting with Joseph and Jacob, had no idea where this journey would take them, and how it would turn out for everyone. 

But that's the broad sweep.  How about everyday life for the Hebrew salves?

Hey!  I heard that we were free once, and didn't have to work day after day in the desert sun.  What happened?

Joseph did right by us. We had food and what we needed and Goshen is a nice place to live.  What happened?

The Pharoah has set up a plan to kill our baby boys!  WHAT HAPPENED?

All good questions, but that is truly the motto of the desert:  "What happened?"  Life as I know it has changed so much that my life is now almost unrecognizable.  All that I took my identity from is gone.  All that I saw as part of my life as faded into view and now I face the uncertainty of wide open desert spaces with rocks, wind and emptiness.

What happened?

Come, walk with me in the desert.  You may have just left one and you are trying to process the experience; you may be entering one, and wondering what the future holds or you may be in yet another one, wondering if there is any other kind of terrain in your world.  This might be your first sojourn and you are looking for a map.

Join me. If you notice that once the Israelites went into the desert, they went together--in a community.  God does not have you out there alone.

Even Jesus, who entered the desert, went out with His Father and the Holy Spirit, and the angels ministered to Him when His time out there was done.  

Come. 

No one asks to go in to the desert, but we can choose, even if we are broken and weary, how we respond. 

Come.